Bengsten_2013_Street Art as Public Art

8/18/2019 Bengsten_2013_Street Art as Public Art

1/19


2/19

Beyond the public art machine: a criticalexamination of street art as public art

Peter Bengtsen

Beyond the public art machine

On May 6 th 2 0 1 0 , a seminar on the activeinclusion of public art in the developmentof urban space entitled Smack Bang into society was held in Helsingborg, Sweden.The context of the seminar was H , a long-term urban renewal project of Helsingborg’scentral southern districts. Speakers includedrepresentatives from the local city council,the National Public Art Council of Sweden,as well as architects and professional artistswho shared their experiences of creating andintegrating art in public space. Among the

presentations one stood out both in respectto form and content: when one of the speak-ers, Christoph du Preez, a curator at the RedLocation Museum in Port Elizabeth, SouthAfrica, had to withdraw from the seminar atthe last minute due to visa issues, the Swedishstreet artist Akay * who was attending theseminar * stepped in and made an impromp-tu presentation of some of the unsanctioned

interventions that he and his partners havebeen creating in public space around theworld since the middle of the 1 9 9 0 s.1

In his presentation, Akay argued thatregardless of planning, public space is alwaysopen to individual interpretation * a view which brings to mind Henri Lefebvre’s con-tention that it is a » supreme illusion to deferto architects, urbanists or planners as being

experts or ultimate authorities in matters

relating to space « .2 This central argumentwas underpinned by numerous cases, suchas the unsanctioned project Trailer Park Kids from 2006 (Fig. 1), in which Akay and fellow

artist Klisterpeter with few means took tem-porary possession of an otherwise neglectedspace under a bridge in central Stockholm,thereby bringing attention to it and reinter-preting its possible meaning. 3 While thepresentation provided a fresh perspective atthe seminar by pointing to some commondenominators of unsanctioned artistic expres-sions and public art, and by making the

argument that the notion of the latter shouldnot be reduced to the outcome of projectcompetitions and curatorial processes, theorganisers’ omitting this very perspectivefrom the original seminar programme canbe seen as a symptom of just such a tendency:although a vast amount of the artistic en-deavours that go on in public space today are neither sanctioned nor carried out by

recognised artists, when discussing publicart there is still an inclination towards focus-ing on precisely the curated and sanctionedwork of professional artists, while unsanc-tioned expressions such as graffiti and streetart are largely left at the margins of thedebate.

Of course this critique is not new. 2 5 yearsago, Patricia C. Phillips criticised an under-

standing of public art as something that has

# Taylor & Francis 2013 K O N S T H I S T O R I S K T I D S K R I F T , 2 0 1 3

h t t p : / / d x . d o i . o r g / 1 0 . 1 0 8 0 / 0 0 2 3 3 6 0 9 . 2 0 1 2 . 7 6 2 8 0 4

Downoaddy

a

Mah

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00233609.2012.762804http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00233609.2012.762804


3/19

to conform to certain » standards and criteriafor selection and review « in her seminalarticle on the broken state of the » public artmachine « , and she suggested that the neces-

sity to deal with the bureaucratic proceduresof the public art production system, to» weave one’s way through its labyrinthinenetwork of proposal submissions to appro-priate agencies, filings and refilings of budgetestimates, presentations to juries, and nego-tiations with government or corporate spon-sors, requires a variety of skills that arefrequently antithetical to the production of

a potent work of art«

.4

On the basis of thiscritique, Phillips champions a broader defini-tion of public art, marked by a strongeremphasis on individual vision and indepen-dent thinking, which challenges the perceivedartistic conformity and mediocrity encour-aged by the public art machine and whichdemonstrates » a commitment to independent‘guerrilla’ activity as an alternative to institu-

tionalized commissioning«

.5

Further, Phillips contends that public art’s» public dimension is a psychological, ratherthan a physical or environmental, construct « .As such it is not contingent on location, but

rather its ability to critically engage with thepublic and civic life.6 This point is supportedby art historian Cher Krause Knight whoclaims that » art’s publicness rests in thequality and impact of its exchanges withaudiences « .7 The public nature of an artwork is thus not first and foremost linked to whatMiwon Kwon has called a phenomenologicalsite, which is to say a physical site in which

an artwork is »

singularly and multiply ex-perienced in the here and now through thebodily presence of each viewing subject,in a sensory immediacy of spatial extensionand temporal duration « .8 Rather, the publicnature of public art seems to be contingent onthe artwork’s discursive site, which Kwondelineates as » a field of knowledge, intellec-tual exchange, or cultural debate « .9 Further,

she goes on to point out that »

the chance to

Fig. 1. Akay and Klisterpeter, Trailer Park Kids (2 006). Temporary installation, Munkbron, Stockholm (photographcopyright Akay/Dokument Press).

2 P E T E R B E N G T S E N

Downoaddy

a

Mah


4/19


5/19

for a re-thinking of public art were alsovoiced. Thus, the unique nature of the H project was emphasised in that, unlike many other urban development projects, the parti-

cipating artists would be included in theformation of the new area of the city fromthe get-go. Instead of being invited to proposeworks that would fill a designated spot inthe new urban landscape as a sort of after-thought, the art would be integrated in theplans from the very beginning. However,from the presentations it also became clearthat the selection of the artists who would

be sanctioned to contribute to the winningproject would rely on a conventional processof proposal submissions and panel selections.In this respect the idea of what public artcould potentially be was not fundamentally challenged, with the exception of Akay’saforementioned presentation.

Keeping in mind the proclaimed attentionto the active involvement of artists, it is alsocurious that the official Competition report from the project competition for H Imagine Helsingborg in its 1 62 pages only mentionsthe word » art « three times (twice in thewinning proposal), while the word » artist «can be found a grand total of two times. 1 7

The winning proposal The Tolerant City includes a skate park which is envisioned asa » building in continuous transformation «and a » generator of urban art « .1 8 From the

proposal it is unclear exactly what » urbanart « is meant to entail. In my research I havesometimes found that people use the terminterchangeably with street art, but as willbe discussed in more detail later, it morecommonly relates to commercial art productsmade by artists who are somehow associatedwith the street art world. The street art world,in turn, is a term inspired by the American

sociologist Howard S. Becker, which describes

a social environment in which expressionsare continually discussed and thereby socially constructed as precisely street art. 1 9

Returning to the proposal, the fact that

it envisions a continuous transformation of the skate park suggests the embracing of * inany case inevitable * expressions of individualcreativity. However, it is interesting to notethat while these creative endeavours may beencouraged, they are simultaneously resignedto take place within the predefined space of asubcultural reservation and, it is understood,not outside of it.

While the conservative nature of thepublic art machine no doubt contributes tothe inability of a lot of public art to actively and critically engage with the spectator, itis not the only factor that needs to be takeninto account when considering the art form’sposition today. Indeed, I would argue, any such perceived failure has little to do with theartistic expressions themselves, but is to ahigher degree contingent on the delimitationsthat we as art historians and critics havecreated to define public art as a field. Or, toput it boldly: public art is not failing, ournotion of it is!

What I mean to propose is not the need fora practical inclusion of street art in projectslike H . Indeed, as I will demonstrate in thefollowing section, experiences from the inter-section between street art and the world of

art galleries and museums suggest that some-thing essential may be lost when street art ispractically embedded by curators in institu-tional frameworks. Rather, what I proposehere is that our perception of unsanctionedexpressions on a theoretical level needs tobe fundamentally re-assessed. Consequently, Isuggest an expansion of the notion of publicart to include not just sanctioned works of

art (whether assuaging or controversial in


Downoaddy

a

Mah


6/19

nature), but also unsanctioned public expres-sions such as street art and graffiti, whichcontinuously provoke an active public debateand which arguably represent precisely the

sort of individual expression and independentthinking that Phillips and other agents withinthe field of public art theory call for.

A telling precedent: street art and theart institution

In order to understand the need to focus on atheoretical, rather than a practical, inclusion

of street art in the field of public art, it isuseful to consider the experiences from streetart’s intersection with the world of galleriesand museums. During the past 6 7 years,street art seems to have gradually shifted frombeing an artistic subculture with a relatively low profile in the mainstream art world to amore widely recognised art form, which isincreasingly receiving attention from galleries,auctions houses, museums, and collectors. InSeptember 2006 , the British artist Banksy’ssolo-show Barely legal. A three day vandalized warehouse extravaganza in Los Angeles re-ceived massive media attention and it is seenby many as a spearhead event which put thecommercial potential of street art on the mapof the fine art world. Two auctions in quick succession at Sotheby’s and Bonhams inOctober 2006 saw the artist’s work selling

at record prices, which further substantiatedhis position. 2 0 In February 2008 , Bonhamsheld its first auction dedicated to urban art(as previously mentioned, this term is oftenused to describe the commercial products of artists associated with the street art world),and later that year the Tate Modern inLondon hosted the exhibition Street Art. In2009 , Banksy held a twelve week summer

show at the council-run Bristol’s City Museum

& Art Gallery which reportedly was visitedmore than 300 .000 times,2 1 and 2 0 11 saw the major exhibition Art in the Streets at theMOCA Geffen Contemporary in Los Angeles.

In addition, street art has also entered theworld of academia and has been discussed inarticles, theses and dissertations by scholarsfrom a range of disciplines including arthistory, visual culture studies, philosophy,criminal law, and didactics. 2 2 These develop-ments might suggest that street art has beenembraced by the institutions of the estab-lished art world. However, I would argue that

it is really only a relatively few artists, whogenerally also produce commercial artwork,who have been accepted, while street art assuch remains marginalised.

The practical inclusion of street art invarious institutional contexts gives rise tocertain challenges, which are worth bearing inmind when considering an approach to streetart as public art. Taking Art in the Streets as a

case in point, one of the exhibition’s biggestissues, as I experienced it during a visit inMay 2 0 11 , was the selection of artists. HereI am not referring to the specific artists thatwere included in the show and catalogue,although this aspect of the selection hasalso been a contentious topic both due tothe curators’ vested commercial interests insome of the included artists and because of

the division of the artists into what Swedishart historian Jacob Kimvall has called » twodifferent leagues: an » official« category of 5 9 artists whose biographies are included inthe attractively designed and very detailedcatalogue, and a » second tier « of 1 00 morewho are not to be found in the officialmaterial « .2 3 What I am addressing here israther the selection process itself , which is an

inherent part of a gallery or museum show,

B E Y O N D T H E P U B L I C A R T M A C H I N E 5

Downoaddy

a

Mah


7/19

but which is somewhat antithetical to theotherwise open nature of street art.

Drawing on the French sociologist PierreBourdieu’s thoughts about distinction, Marita

Sturken and Lisa Cartwright have pointed outthat » institutions such as museums functionnot only to educate people about the history of art but also to instill in them a broadersense of what is tasteful and what is not, whatis valuable and what is not, and what is » real«art and what is not « .2 4 Regardless of thecurators’ intentions, then, while it could beargued that the practical inclusion of art-

works by selected street artists in a museumcontext might increase the focus on * andperhaps acceptance of * street art in a broadersense, the curatorial distinctions may alsoimply to the audience which agents should beseen as significant artists and, by extension,which ones are unimportant. If there is anunderstanding that the real and importantstreet artists are those whose work is beingcanonised in the exclusive context of the artinstitution, then the majority of unsanctionedexpressions which remain on the street arenot really art at all.

If we are to take street art seriously aspublic art, this hierarchal division and lossof openness is highly problematic. In 1999 ,Phillips addressed the relationship betweenpublic art and gallery art and argued againstthe idea that » what resonates as public art

may unquestionably fail as » art. «« .2 5

Instead,she contended that » public art is always art.It is not something that occasionally aspiresto and achieves the status of art. The art of public art cannot be negotiable « .2 6 I agreewith Phillips that we must insist that publicart, including street art, is always art. How-ever, this does not preclude the notion thatgallery art and street art often function in

quite different ways, and that street artworks

that become practically embedded in a gallery or another curated context * for instance by being removed from the street or by beingreproduced on mediums like canvas or paper

by the artist * may lose something in theprocess.

In a commentary regarding the February 2008 urban art auction at Bonhams, theBritish art critic Matthew Collings criticisedwhat he perceived as the infantile nature of street art, describing it as » graffiti, comics-style stuff, spray-paint art, flyposting the artof groovy youth « which appeals to » childish

philistine literalist[s]«

.2 7

What Collings see-mingly failed to recognise when making thisswiping condemnation of street art is that acritique based on the assessment of commer-cial artworks at an auction house says littleabout the artistic merit of art in the street.However, while his equation of urban art withstreet art is a fallacy, his critique does high-light the importance of the context in whichartworks are presented and experienced andthe shifts in meaning that can occur whenmoving a visual expression from one contextto another. As I mentioned above, many streetartworks are made to function in a differentway than art created for the gallery. Forinstance, in the context of the street, artworksare seldom contemplated for a long time by the spectator and part of their artistic merittherefore lies in their ability to create an

impression during the brief moment of anunexpected aesthetic encounter. 2 8 Further-more, the context of the street itself is ofteninstrumental in providing the visual expres-sion with meaning.

An example of what may happen to anexpression when it is moved from one contextto another is Banksy’s artwork Girl With Balloon , a street version of which could be

found in London’s South Bank area around


Downoaddy

a

Mah


8/19

2004 (Fig. 2 ). The artwork consists of a one-layer stencil in black spray paint of a humangestalt * a naturally scaled young girl in adress * who is reaching out for a heart shaped

balloon in front of her. The balloon hasbeen stencilled in red spray paint with awhite accentuation (mimicking a reflection of light), and a stencilled black string is hangingdown from it just out of the girl’s reach.Judging by her hair, the wind is moving theballoon * perhaps a symbol of love or childishinnocence * further away from her and theimmediate impression is that she has lost

it against her will. However, upon furtherinspection, the hint of a determined smile onthe girl’s face suggests that perhaps she madea decision to let go of the balloon. The juxtaposition of this evocative and ambiguousvisual expression and the weathered and grey stone wall creates an emotional balance whichprevents the artwork from becoming overly pathetic. The context also creates a feeling of

urgency, as if the girl’s loss might be related tothe raw urban environment where feelings,imagination and love are difficult to holdon to.

Girl With Balloon was also published as asilkscreen print by the London based printhouse Pictures on Wall in 2 0 0 4 , and thisartwork is quite different from its street

counterpart. The natural scale of the depic-ted girl, which I would argue helped theaudience to immediately relate to her, is lostin the print (here the girl is approximately 2 6 centimetres tall, which is a scale of aboutone to five compared to the street artwork).The miniscule size also makes it difficult toread the girl’s facial expression, which createdan interesting abstruseness in the street art-

work. The lack of immediate empathic con-nection is further reinforced by the plaindemarcated borders of the artwork (the edgesof the paper) which clearly position the girlin a pictorial space separate from that of thespectator. And finally, when transferred tothe medium of clean, cream-colored paper,the fruitful combination of the roughnessof the surrounding environment and the

delicate nature of the visual expression islost, leaving us with a much more blandexpression. In this case the change of mediumand context brings with it a loss of depth and

Fig. 2. Banksy (circa 1974), Girl With Balloon (circa 20 04 ). Temporary stencil painting, South Bank, London

(photograph copyright Dominic Robinson).


Downoaddy

a

Mah


9/19

complexity, which leaves the artwork wideopen to critics like Collings.

Banksy’s Girl With Balloon is a particularly clear example of the loss of meaning which

occurs to varying degrees when artistic ex-pressions make the transition from street togallery. The experiences derived from streetart’s meeting with the world of art institu-tions are important to take note of, asthey provide some indication of what couldhappen if street art were to be practically embedded in the bureaucratic machinery of sanctioned public art.

In the following, I will go on to discussthe connection between street art and publicart with an outset in some of the features Ihave found to be characteristic of street art.As we shall see, while the analysis of thesetraits shows that there are similarities betweenstreet art and public art, there is especially one characteristic which sets street art apartas a specific type of public art , which mustremain practically autonomous from thepublic art machine in order to retain itsunique artistic qualities.

The characteristics of street art: acritical examination

As the above discussion makes clear, the streetcontext plays an important part in establish-ing the meaning in street artworks. The

significance of the street is also emphasisedby the Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy Nicho-las Alden Riggle, who attempts to get to thecore of street art’s nature in his article » StreetArt: The Transfiguration of the Common-places« from 2 0 1 0 . Here Riggle contendsthat an » artwork is street art if, and only if,its material use of the street is internal toits meaning « ,2 9 while in a more popularly

oriented text from the same year suggesting

that » street art is art that uses the street,either as an artistic material or as an artisticcontext (or both), in such a way that any acceptable interpretation of it must refer to

the way in which that use of the street givesthe piece its significance« .3 0 What bothversions of Riggle’s definitions make clear isthat street art is somehow contingent on afundamental material and/or conceptual useof the street. One thing that remains unclear,however, is who is to judge whether the use of the street is indeed essential to the meaning of a specific artwork.

This is problematic because the way inwhich street artworks make use of * andderive their meaning directly from * the streetcontext varies. This becomes clear if wecompare the use of pictorial space in thework of the New York based artist duo Faileand the Danish artist Armsrock (Fig. 3).Faile’s stencilled image mimics the coverof an old comic book and features a lightly clad woman emerging from the mouth of apredatory dinosaur with the Chrysler Build-ing towering in the background. While themotif itself references the city in which thework is physically situated, the image isclearly demarcated as an independent pictor-ial space by its size, clear-cut rectangularformat and cartoon-like graphic style. Con-versely, Armsrock’s paste-up of a life-sizehuman being is more integrated in its

immediate surroundings in virtue of its lack of any clear visual framing.

The different mediums employed by theartists also influence the works’ relation to thestreet context. Whereas the iconic layer inFaile’s artwork is made with a stencil, createdto make multiple copies of an identical image,Armsrock’s is an original drawing, whichcannot be replicated in another physical site.

Furthermore, as Armsrock has explained to


Downoaddy

a

Mah


10/19

me during our conversations, when he wasworking on his series of paste-ups he wouldsometimes do a small sketch of people hesaw in the street and later return to paste upa life-size portrait at the site of the initialencounter. In this sense his work is not justspecific to the street, but to a specific street.Even though the use of the street is arguably not essential to the meaning of Faile’s artwork

(the motif in the chosen example has been

presented in gallery contexts without any significant change in its internal meaning),the creative dynamics that are specific to thestreet as an artistic context means that evenexpressions which may not initially relatedirectly and consciously to their phenomen-ological site can come to do so over time.For instance, if we choose to look at the wallin the example as a coherent whole rather

than as a background for separate expressions

Fig. 3. Street artworks by Faile and Armsrock (200 7). Brooklyn, New York City (photograph copyright Jake Dobkin).


Downoaddy

a

Mah


11/19

by two different artists, we may begin toperceive Faile’s work as a painting or posterwhich exists in the same pictorial space asArmsrock’s man, who in turn comes to relate

to Faile’s work as a spectator. In this way thetwo artworks provide each other with contextand meaning. This effect can also be observedin Fig. 2 , in which the verbal expression» THERE IS ALWAYS HOPE« may influencethe reading of Banksy’s Girl With Balloon by steering the viewer’s interpretation of thisambiguous visual expression in an optimisticdirection.

As expressions appear and disappear onthe street, entirely new meanings may emergefrom this continuous and unpredictablecollaboration between different artists. Theresult of this process is that even the meaningof expressions such as Faile’s otherwise ratherdetached artwork may become dependenton the street context over time. This high-lights the initial problem: when argumentscan present the meaning of Faile’s artwork asboth contingent on and independent fromthe street context, who decides whether theuse of the street is essential or not?

Another problem with Riggle’s definition isthat artworks somehow deriving their mean-ing from the street as an » artistic material « or» artistic context « does not necessarily makethem street art. As we have seen in the caseof Banksy’s Girl With Balloon , artists often

replicate street artworks on canvas or othermedia and the reading of such gallery worksmay in part rely on an intertextual referenceto their street counterparts. This arguably makes the meaning of these artworks con-tingent on the street (if we accept that streetartworks are part of the street). However, asI have pointed out previously, these artworksare usually labelled as something other than

street art (urban art), which goes to show

that the complex nature of street art is notencapsulated by Riggle’s definition. This alsobecomes apparent when considering YngveLundell’s sculpture group Optimistorkestern

(the band of optimists), which was unveiledin Malmö in 1985 (Fig. 4 ). The artwork,which visually mimics a five-piece marchingband, was placed on Södergatan when thiswas converted into the city’s first pedestrian-only street. In spite of the marching figuresarguably deriving at least part of their mean-ing from the pedestrian zone both as anartistic material and context, Optimistorkestern

would most likely be classed as a work of public art rather than street art by most agentswithin both of these fields.

One reason that a definition of street artbased solely on the properties of artworks fallsshort is that it does not take into considera-tion the importance of the street art world.It is my contention that any definition whichdoes not recognise that the notion of streetart is not solely reliant on the artworks them-selves, but also on the social constructionof artworks as belonging to one category oranother, is bound to fall short. This does notmean, however, that we cannot attempt toidentify some of the traits that constitutestreet art as a specific form of public art, aslong as we keep in mind that we will notarrive at an all-encompassing definition.

The discussion of street art’s essential

connection to the street has revealed someother characteristics which may allow us tobetter understand how it is at once similarto, and different from, other types of publicart. I would suggest that the perpetually unfinished state of street artworks , which wasdiscussed in relation to Faile’s stencil artwork,may be one such trait which, in turn, isconnected to street art’s openness . It could be

argued that the open nature of street art,


Downoaddy

a

Mah


12/19

which in principle allows anyone to contri-bute to the evolution of a street artwork, isa feature which distinguishes street art fromfor instance Optimistorkestern and other pub-

lic artworks, which would not be consideredstreet art by members of the worlds of streetart and public art in spite of using the streetin a way which arguably is essential to theirmeaning.

Whereas street artworks may appear opento alteration, the perceived finality of sanc-tioned public art does not as a rule invitemembers of the public to add their own

creative expressions to the existing artwork.However, as art historian Jessica Sjöholm haspointed out, creative additions to public artstill do occur frequently. 3 1 An example of this is the addition of an ICA plastic bag tothe right hand of Skule Waksvik’s sculptureLady at the dock from 1 9 8 9 (Fig. 5). Thesculpture is permanently installed at Brygge-torget by the harbour in Oslo and given the

specific commercial context *

the whole area,

including all artworks, is privately owned by the shopping mall Aker Brygge * this simpleintervention may be interpreted as a com-ment on consumerism or the trivialisation of

art. The addition to Lady at the dock andsimilar examples suggest that while the publicis rarely encouraged to make changes tosanctioned public artworks, these expressionsare in fact open to reinterpretation andcreative interaction, although alterations willperhaps be relatively short-lived.

Consequently, while I see openness as animportant characteristic of street art, I would

argue that it cannot be used to make a clearseparation between street art and other typesof public art. This contention is furthersubstantiated when considering that theopenness of street art is practically limitedby the fact that modification or destruction of street artworks may have legal implications, just as is the case with sanctioned publicartworks. 3 2 In addition to this, the power

structures and unwritten rules of the social

Fig. 4. Yngve Lundell (1931), Optimistorkestern (1985). Permanent installation, So ¨ dergatan, Malmo ¨ .


Downoaddy

a

Mah


13/19

world of street art mean that even if changesto a street artwork are done legally, they may

have quite severe consequences depending onwhom one happens to cross. Notwithstandingthe formal legal aspects, then, a key differencebetween sanctioned public art and street artseems to lie not in the possibility to interactwith the artworks but in who administers theconsequences of doing so.

As can be seen from the above, we arefaced with numerous challenges when tryingto delimit street art from public art. I have

critically discussed the idea that the use of thestreet as an artistic material and/or artistic

context must be essential in order for some-thing to be categorised as street art and Ihave pointed out the problems of practically assessing whether or not the use of the streetis indeed vital to an artwork. Further, I havedemonstrated that while it seems clear thatstreet art is contingent on some form of connection to the street, be it in a material orimmaterial sense, the same can be said formany expressions (both on and off the street)

Fig. 5. Skule Waksvik (1927), Lady at the Dock (1989). Permanent installation with an added ICA plastic bag byunkown artist (2010), Bryggetorget, Aker Brygge, Oslo.


Downoaddy

a

Mah


14/19

which are not categorised as street art by members of the street art world. This discus-sion has led to the identification of someother interesting characteristics of street art,

namely the perpetually unfinished state of street artworks and their openness to altera-tion. However, as I have argued, none of thesecharacteristics can serve to make a cleardistinction between street art and other typesof public art. While this supports the notionthat these art forms are not so different innature, and while we may thus begin to think of street artworks and sanctioned public

artworks as variations within a single fieldrather than segregated art forms, I will now go on to discuss another characteristic of street art, which I see as a central argumentfor keeping street art practically separatedfrom the public art machine: its unsanctioned nature .

The unsanctioned nature of street artas a carrier of meaning

The significance of street art’s unsanctionednature has been observed by other theoristsand writers before me, such as the curator of Tate Modern’s 2008 exhibition Street Art ,Cedar Lewisohn, who points out that » whenart is placed in the street without the inputof a sanctioning body, everything around the

image becomes important: the social contextand the political context. If you take the samework and put it in a museum, all this extrameaning is lost « .3 3 Lewisohn’s statementfits well with the previously discussed ideathat the meaning of the street artwork is tosome extent contingent on the street context.However, he remains vague in regards tothe significance of the unsanctioned nature

itself, suggesting only that it imbues street art

expressions with some kind of inherent socialand political content.

Riggle is more specific when he arguesthat a main difference between unsanctioned

street art and sanctioned public art lays inthe former’s ability to maintain public spaceas an » object of a certain constellation of practical attitudes, including the belief thatthe space is primarily for the public « , whereaspublic art invariably » transforms the publicspace into an artworld-sanctioned artspace «which alienates the public. 3 4 While the notionthat unsanctioned and sanctioned art influ-

ence people’s perception of public space indifferent ways is interesting, Riggle’s conclu-sion misses the point. These days, even whenunsanctioned, Banksy’s art on the street isroutinely covered with plywood or sheetsof Perspex to protect it as soon as it appears.The unsanctioned art thus produces a reac-tion which » threatens to transform its resi-dence into a museum-in-public and thereby devoid its use of public space of any streetartistic significance « , an effect similar to thatwhich Riggle argues sanctioned artworkshave.3 5 The case of Banksy suggests that itmay not be the sanctioning in itself whichcauses an artwork to turn public space into anoppressive art space (there are also examplesof sanctioned public artworks, which argu-ably do not have this effect). Instead, I believethat this may occur as a result of the

recognised monetary and/or artistic value of a specific artwork attributed to an establishedartist.

Although Riggle’s idea of the influence of the unsanctioned nature of street art does nothold in the above empirical example, I wouldstill maintain the importance of this char-acteristic’s potential to influence the viewer’sexperience of both artwork and public

space. However, it should be noted that


Downoaddy

a

Mah


15/19

while we have so far considered street art asunsanctioned, this should be understood asa perceived status and not necessarily a factualone. For the viewer there is often no way

to immediately ascertain from an artwork alone whether or not it is in fact sanctioned(although the medium and material aspectsof the work may serve as clues). It musttherefore be the viewer’s perception of an expression as sanctioned or unsanctioned whichis the real key issue. Thus, while the de facto unsanctioned nature of an artwork does not necessarily and categorically change

the properties of the space in which it isembedded, it at least has the potential toopen up public space as a site of explorationin a way which expressions perceived assanctioned public art arguably do not.

An example of this is a visual expressionwhich I encountered one day on my way home from the local supermarket. Thiswalk, which normally is a matter of pureroutine, was suddenly interrupted when alarge number of keys scattered on the groundcaught my attention and caused a momen-tary sense of confusion. However, I soonrealised that the plethora of keys was in factstencilled on the ground in black spray paint. As I took in the unsanctioned artwork (Fig. 6 ), my gaze was guided towards a doorwhich * although in plain sight * I had nevernoticed before. The juxtaposition of the many

keys and the locked door made the visualsuggestion that someone had tried to gainaccess in vain, and it made me think about allthe other locked doors and spaces in the city to which most of us have no right of entry and rarely pay any attention.

While the artwork in this case explicitly directed my attention to an element in thesurrounding urban environment and proble-

matised the issue of access, I would argue that

any unsanctioned artwork has the potentialto pull us out of our routines and increasethe awareness of our surroundings. In virtueof their very existence, unsanctioned expres-

sions point to the possibility of interactionand also question the order of public space.Who is allowed to do what, and why? In thisway, unsanctioned street art, as Riggle puts it,» respects at least one formalist tenet. Form-alists thought that art should lift us out of the everyday « and when unexpectedly encounter-ing unsanctioned street art, » one is forced toreconsider one’s purely practical and rather

indifferent relationship to the street, and acuriosity to explore the work develops « .3 6

I would add to this the crucial point that acuriosity to (at least mentally) explore publicspace as such may also emerge. The feelingthat an unsanctioned expression is not really supposed to be there and the knowledge thatit could potentially be gone tomorrow may lead to a sense of privilege (or annoyance)from having come upon it before it disap-pears: it puts into focus the urgency of thehere-and-now existence of the individual in aparticular space, and it makes it necessary totake a stand in relation to the work we areconfronted with.

This awareness of, and curiosity towards,one’s surroundings is something which canalso be experienced in situations unrelatedto street art. Indeed, it is quite common

when visiting new places. On my first visitto Florence, Italy, I remember the feeling of amazement when I unexpectedly (I was notfollowing a map or guidebook) came uponthe open space of Piazzo del Duomo andthe massive Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore,which stood in stark contrast to the narrow and enclosed side streets of the city’s historiccentre which I had traversed for what seemed

like hours. While this feeling of exploration


Downoaddy

a

Mah


16/19

is certainly common when one travels topreviously unknown sites, it is my argumentthat street art can inspire a similar feelingeven in environments which may otherwiseseem familiar.

Much in the vein of Guy Debord’s conceptof de ´ rive , once a process of discovery is ini-tiated, the interested spectator may come tosee the street as a space which holds thepotential for serendipitous encounters and

profound aesthetic experiences. Unlike gal-leries and museums with their schedules andpublished programmes, there is no way toknow what the street will hold on a given day.The unsanctioned and ephemeral nature thusbecomes part of the street artwork’s meaning,as does the interested viewer’s search for theseexperiences: while sanctioned public art inone’s own local area is usually known (and,

often, promptly ignored), and in foreign

Fig. 6. Unknown artist/title, Stencil painting (20 10), Flodga ˚ ngen, Malmo ¨


Downoaddy

a

Mah


17/19

environments is listed in guidebooks and onmaps which explain to the tourist what is andis not worth paying attention to, the searchfor street artworks is typically carried out by

individuals or small groups without suchguidance. It requires a combination of persis-tence and luck to find precisely the expres-sions which one appreciates in the street’smyriad of stimuli, and the artworks becomeall the more valued and meaningful for it.

While the aesthetic properties of the streetartwork should by no means be written off as unimportant, its unsanctioned nature may

lead to a feeling in the interested viewer of independent agency and exploration, whichinfluences the meaning of the artwork and thesense of public space significantly, and whichsets street art apart from sanctioned publicart. In order to retain this carrier of meaning,I would argue that it is crucial for street artto remain unsanctioned and practically in-dependent from the sanctioning body of thepublic art machine.

Conclusion

In this article I have argued that recognisingstreet art as a specific type of public art putsa new perspective on the perceived failureof what Phillips has called » the public artmachine « . While I have demonstrated thedifficulties related to drawing a clear line

between street art and public art, I haveclaimed that the unsanctioned nature of streetart serves as an essential carrier of meaning,which is lost in an institutional context. Ihave therefore argued that a practical separa-tion must be upheld between street art andthe mechanisms of the sanctioned public artworld in order to preserve street art’s parti-cular qualities. In spite of the necessity of this

practical separation, however, I am adamant

about the benefits of thinking about street artas a specific type of public art, as this opensup the field of public art theory to a new andinteresting debate on an art form which is

truly public.

Endnotes1. Patrick Nguyen and Stuart Mackenzie (eds.), Beyond the

Street: The 1 0 0 Leading Figures in Urban Art . Berlin:Gestalten, 2 0 1 0 , pp. 3 46 3 49 .

2 . Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space . Oxford:Blackwell, 1991 , p. 94 .

3 . The artists turned the space under Munkbron into acamping site and hosted a homely barbeque afternoonfor their friends. Peter Baranowski and Akay, Urban

Recreation . Årsta: Dokument Förlag, 2 0 0 6 , p. 1 49 .4 . Patricia C. Phillips, » Out of Order: The Public Art

Machine, « Artforum 2 7 .4 , 1 9 8 8 , p. 9 3 .

5 . Phillips, 1 9 8 8 , p. 96 .

6 . Phillips, 1 9 8 8 , p. 93 .

7 . Cher Krause Knight, Public Art. Theory, Practice and Populism. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2 0 0 8 , p. ix.

8 . Miwon Kwon, One Place after Another. Site-specic Art and Locational Identity. Cambridge: The MIT Press,2 0 0 2 , p. 1 1.

9 . Kwon, 2 0 0 2 , p. 2 6 .

1 0 . Kwon, 2 0 0 2 , p. 3 0 . A more thorough discussion of Kwon’s view on site specicity in relation to street art canbe found in Peter Bengtsen, » Site Specicity and StreetArt,« James Elkins et al. (eds.), Theorizing Visual Studies:Writing Through the Discipline . New York: Routledge,2 0 1 2 , pp. 250 253.

1 1. As Krause Knight points out: » Writing in 1 9 8 8 ,Patricia Phillips complained that public art lacked» clear denitions, « » constructive theory, « or » coherentobjectives« (1988 : 93 ). While the public art eld hasgrown immensely in the last 2 0 years, such denitions,theory, and objectives still elude us; by emphasizing the

function of populist sensibilities in public art, these comeinto sharper focus, particularly the objectives « KrauseKnight, 2 0 0 8 , p. 2 3 .

1 2 . » Mierle Laderman Ukeles, « Artslant.com. Online.Mar 3 1, 2 0 1 2 .

1 3. Phillips, 1 9 8 8 , p. 9 6 .

1 4 . Phillips, 1 9 8 8 , p. 9 5 .

1 5. Phillips, 1 9 8 8 , p. 9 6 .

1 6 . The point that unsanctioned expressions should be seenas a signicant part of public art is substantiated by amore recent text by Phillips in which she writes that

public art »

excludes no media, materials, or process.


Downoaddy

a

Mah


18/19

It can require years of planning, consultation, andapproval to develop, or it can occur spontaneously and unsanctioned « Patricia C. Phillips, » DynamicExchange: Public Art At This Time, « Public Art Review 2 1 (Fall/Winter 1 9 9 9 ). http://www.forecastpublicart.org/anthology-downloads/phillips 2 .pdf. OnlineDec 1, 2 0 1 2 .

1 7 . Competition report from the project competition for H Imagine Helsingborg . Helsingborg: H ImagineHelsingborg, 2 0 0 9 .

1 8 . Competition report H , 2 0 0 9 , p. 1 0 9

1 9 . Becker sees art as a product of a group effort with » anextensive division of labour « rather than the work of asingle immediate producer (the individual we commonly refer to as » the artist « ) see Howard S. Becker, Art Worlds . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1 9 8 2 ,p. 1 3. According to Becker, any given work of art isproduced in a specic context (an art world) by » people

who routinely participate in the making of art works « Becker, 1 9 8 2 , p. 1 6 1.

2 0 . See for instance » Banksy works set auction record « .BBC News (Oct 2 0 , 2 0 0 6 ). http://news.bbc.co.uk/ 2 /hi/entertainment/ 6 0 6 9 3 8 4 .stm . Online Dec 1, 2 0 1 2 and» Banksy artwork sets new benchmark « . BBC News (Oct 2 6 , 2 0 0 6 ). http://news.bbc.co.uk/ 2 /hi/entertainment/ 6 0 8 7 1 2 0 .stm. Online Dec 1 , 2 0 1 2 .

2 1 . » Banksy’s art show draws in 3 00 .0 00 ,« BBC News .3 1 Aug. 2 0 0 9 . http://news.bbc.co.uk/ 2 /hi/uk_news/england/bristol/somerset/ 8 2 3 0 3 0 1 .stm . Online Dec 1 , 2 0 1 2 .

2 2 . E.g. Cecilia Andersson, Rådjur och raketer: Gatukonst

som estetisk produktion och kreativ praktik i det offentliga rummet . Stockholm: HLS Förlag, 2 0 0 6 ; Julia Reinecke,Street-Art: Eine Subkultur zwischen Kunst und Kommerz .Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2 0 0 7 ; Ian Edwards,» Banksy’s Grafti: A Not-so-simple Case of CriminalDamage?, « The Journal of Criminal Law 7 3 , 2009 ,pp. 3 45 3 6 1 .

2 3 . Jacob Kimvall, » Art in the Streets, « Konsthistorisk tidskrift/Journal of Art History 8 0 .4 , 2 0 11 , p. 2 5 4 .

2 4 . Marita Sturken & Lisa Cartwright, Practices of Looking.An Introduction to Visual Culture . New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 2009 , p. 6 0 .

2 5 . Phillips, 1 9 9 9 .2 6 . Phillips, 1999 .

2 7 . Matthew Collings, » Banksy’s ideas have the value of a joke,« The Times Jan 2 8 , 2 0 0 8 . http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article 3 2 6 0 0 6 4 .ece (Online Aug 1 7, 2 0 11 ).

2 8 . This point is reiterated in the following response fromthe Q&A section of Banksy’s website to those who claimthat he expresses himself in a » crass, dumb andsimplistic « manner in his work: » Well duh. They’re rightof course. Most of this stuff is designed to be viewedfrom a moving vehicle « http://www.banksy.co.uk/QA/

qaa.html. Online Dec 1, 2 0 1 2 .

2 9 . Nicholas Alden Riggle, » Street Art: The Transgurationof the Commonplaces, « The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 6 8 , 2 0 1 0 a, p. 2 46 .

3 0 . Nicholas Alden Riggle, » Review of Street Art New York,by Rojo and Harrington, « rev. of Street Art New York , by Jaime Rojo and Steven P. Harrington. Hyperallergic.com.Jul 1 3, 2 0 1 0 b. http://hyperallergic.com/ 7 9 3 3 /street-art-ny-rojo-harrington/. Online Dec 1, 2 0 1 2 .

3 1. Jessica Sjöholm, » Skulptur, klotter och» motmonument « ,« Conference paper, 2 0 0 5 .

3 2 . For instance, the 2 0 11 documentary lm Vigilante Vigilante. The Battle for Expression by Max Good showshow people who are independently trying to removegrafti and street art by painting it over may in fact beguilty of vandalism themselves.

3 3 . Cedar Lewisohn, Street Art. The Grafti Revolution .London: Tate Publishing 2 0 0 8 , p. 1 3 7.

3 4. Riggle,

2 0 1 0a, p.

2 5 5.

3 5 . Riggle, 2 0 1 0 a, p. 2 5 5 .

3 6 . Riggle, 2 0 1 0 a, p. 2 49 .

Summary

This article examines street art as a specifictype of public art. With Patricia C. Phillips’idea of the failing » public art machine «as a point of departure, it contextualises thediscussion of public art as a phenomenonthat goes beyond sanctioned artistic expres-sions. The article examines the characteristicsof street art and demonstrates that street artand public artworks have a number of traitsin common. However, it is argued that streetart’s unsanctioned nature functions as anessential carrier of meaning, and that a prac-tical separation must be upheld between street

art and the sphere of commissioned publicart in order to preserve street art’s particularqualities. This argument finds support in theexperiences derived from the practical inclu-sion of street art in other institutional contexts(galleries and museums), which arguably hasled to a loss of meaning. However, while it isargued that street art must remain practically separate from the public art machine in order

to retain its unsanctioned nature, the article


Downoaddy

a

Mah

http://www.forecastpublicart.org/anthology-downloads/phillips2.pdfhttp://www.forecastpublicart.org/anthology-downloads/phillips2.pdfhttp://www.forecastpublicart.org/anthology-downloads/phillips2.pdfhttp://www.forecastpublicart.org/anthology-downloads/phillips2.pdfhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6069384.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6069384.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6069384.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6069384.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6069384.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6069384.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6087120.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6087120.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6087120.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6087120.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6087120.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6087120.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/bristol/somerset/8230301.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/bristol/somerset/8230301.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/bristol/somerset/8230301.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/bristol/somerset/8230301.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/bristol/somerset/8230301.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/bristol/somerset/8230301.stmhttp://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article3260064.ecehttp://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article3260064.ecehttp://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article3260064.ecehttp://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article3260064.ecehttp://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article3260064.ecehttp://www.banksy.co.uk/QA/qaa.htmlhttp://www.banksy.co.uk/QA/qaa.htmlhttp://hyperallergic.com/7933/street-art-ny-rojo-harrington/http://hyperallergic.com/7933/street-art-ny-rojo-harrington/http://hyperallergic.com/7933/street-art-ny-rojo-harrington/http://hyperallergic.com/7933/street-art-ny-rojo-harrington/http://hyperallergic.com/7933/street-art-ny-rojo-harrington/http://hyperallergic.com/7933/street-art-ny-rojo-harrington/http://www.banksy.co.uk/QA/qaa.htmlhttp://www.banksy.co.uk/QA/qaa.htmlhttp://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article3260064.ecehttp://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article3260064.ecehttp://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article3260064.ecehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/bristol/somerset/8230301.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/bristol/somerset/8230301.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6087120.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6087120.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6069384.stmhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6069384.stmhttp://www.forecastpublicart.org/anthology-downloads/phillips2.pdfhttp://www.forecastpublicart.org/anthology-downloads/phillips2.pdf


19/19

contends that on a theoretical level it is fruitfulto think of street art as a specific type of publicart. Such a shift in discourse can open up thefield of public art theory and provide new and

interesting perspectives on public art as an artform which is not failing, but truly engageswith the public.

By Peter Bengtsen, Ph.D. candidate at theDepartment of Arts and Cultural Sciences,

Division of Art History and Visual Studies atLund University, Sweden.

Peter Bengtsen

Inst. för kulturvetenskaper (Hämtställe 5 9 )Box 1 1 72 2 1 0 0 LundSwedenphone: 4 6 2 2 2 3 8 0 6e-mail: [email protected]


Downoaddy

a

Mah

Documents

Bengsten_2013_Street Art as Public Art